The Hidden Oasis (33 page)

‘My little bears!’ she would chuckle. ‘My little monsters!’

Tonight, what with all the running around for Girgis –
flying out into the desert, chasing across Cairo – there hadn’t been time to let the meat soak, not properly, and so they had just dunked it in the
karkaday
while they chopped and prepared the other vegetables before combining everything in a clay pot and putting the pot in the oven to heat.

They cooked for their mother at least twice a week, more often if they could manage it, back at her cramped, two-room hovel in Butneya, where they had grown up, amid the grim labyrinth of alleyways that snaked off the back of the al-Azhar mosque. They’d tried to persuade her to move out, to come and live with them, or at least allow them to rent her somewhere more comfortable, but she was happy here and so that’s where she stayed. They gave her money, and had brought her new furniture – including a lovely big bed, and a wide-screen TV and DVD player – and the neighbours looked out for her, so she was well cared for. Despite that, they worried. Years of beatings from
el-Teyaban,
the Snake – they refused to call him their father – had left her frail and unsteady, and although the Snake had long since disappeared – after the two of them had given
him
a bloody good beating – the damage was done. Deep down they both knew she didn’t have long left. It was something they neither talked about nor acknowledged. It was just too painful. Their
omm
was everything to them. Everything.

The
torly
done, they pulled it from the oven. The room filled with a fabulous, fatty aroma of cooked meat, tinged with just the vaguest hint of mint – another of their mother’s secret ingredients. They carried it through to the living area and arranged it on the floor. The three of them
sat cross-legged around the clay pot, ladling its contents into their bowls, their mother clucking and fussing, slurping at her spoon, her toothless old mouth puckering up like a dried slug.

‘My little bears!’ she cackled. ‘How you spoil your
omm
! Next time you must let me do the cooking.’

‘Next time,’ they replied, glancing at each other and winking, knowing she was just saying it, that she loved to be waited on and pampered. And why not? She’d made enough sacrifices for them over the years. Best mum in the world, she was. Everything to them. Everything.

They chatted as they ate, or at least their mum did, filling them in on all the local news and gossip: how Mrs Guzmi had had another grandson, and poor old Mr Farid had had to have a second testicle removed, and the Attalas had just purchased a brand new cooker (’Six electric rings, would you believe! Six! And they got a free baking tray with it’). She didn’t ask about their work and they didn’t tell her. Something to do with community relations, that’s all she knew. No point in getting her worried. And anyway, they wouldn’t be working for Girgis for much longer. Over the years they’d saved up more than enough to realize their own dream: a food concession inside Cairo International Stadium, selling
taamiya
and
fatir
and, of course, their mum’s legendary
torly.
Not long now and they’d be making the break. Girgis, they both agreed, was a complete and utter wanker.

Once the
torly
was finished they took the dishes to the sink and – each in a matching Red Devils apron – washed them while their mum settled herself in the reclining armchair they’d filched for her from an office furniture
store over in Zamalek, rubbing her feet and humming to herself.

‘And did you bring your
omm
a little treasure?’ she asked coquettishly when they came back in to join her. ‘A little something for dessert?’

‘Mum,’ they both sighed. ‘It’s not good for you.’

She whined and croaked and pleaded, squirming around on the chair, mewling like a hungry cat, and although they disapproved they didn’t like to deny her, knew it was one of her few real pleasures. And so while one of them set the DVD player the other laid all the necessary equipment out on a tray – belt, spoon, water, lighter, alcohol swab, lemon juice, cotton wool balls – and, removing the syringe, needle and heroin wrap from his pocket, cooked up her fix.

‘My little bears,’ she murmured as the drug emptied into her arm, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. ‘My little monsters.’

They held her hands, and stroked her hair, and told her they loved her and would always be here for her. Then, once she had drifted off into a world of her own, they settled down on the floor and started the DVD, clapping their hands in excitement even though they’d watched it fifty times before: El-Ahly’s 4-3 victory over Zamalek in the 2007 Egyptian Cup Final, the greatest game of football ever played.

They chanted softly to themselves while behind them their
omm
sighed and chuckled.

‘My little bears,’ she murmured. ‘My little monsters.’

‘Every day for the last decade I’ve dreamt of seeing pictures like this,’ said Flin, staring down at the photographs in his hand. ‘And now I am seeing them I can think of nothing on earth I’d rather look at less.’

He shuffled the images, going through them one by one – again.

‘It could be anywhere,’ he groaned, shaking his head helplessly. ‘Any-bloody-where.’

Freya cricked her neck and gazed out across the city through the wall-less void at the rear end of the room. She felt curiously calm given that their twenty minutes had almost elapsed. Behind her the three guards were playing cards at the head of the staircase, seemingly oblivious to their presence. At her side Flin pored over the photos, as he had been doing ever since Girgis had left, his eyes boring into them, his hands trembling.

Some of the images were general shots of a tree-filled gorge, its sheer walls rearing up towards a slit of pale sky high above, as though someone had sliced a scalpel deep through the rock. Others were more specific: a towering obelisk with the
sedjet
sign inscribed on each of its four faces. An avenue of sphinxes. A monumental statue of a seated figure with a human body and the head of a hawk.
There were pillars and parts of walls and three more shots of the gateway they had already seen, everything swaddled in a heavy jacket of vegetation – flowers and trees and branches and leaves, as though the mud-brick and carved stone of the man-made structures had over time begun to dissolve back into the natural landscape, reverting to their elemental state.

Mud-brick, carved stone, trees, rock walls – nothing, however, to give any hint of the wider context, of the oasis’s actual location. And now their time was almost up.

They’re going to cut my arm off,
Freya thought, wholly unable to connect with the horror of what was about to happen to her. It was almost as if she was looking in on the scene from outside. As if it was someone else’s limb that was about to be shredded.
They’re going to cut off my arm and I’m never going to climb again.

For some inexplicable reason she felt like laughing.

She glanced at her watch – a couple of minutes left, tops – and stepped up to the edge of the rough concrete floor, looking down at the street below. She thought about jumping, but it was way too long a drop. Thirty metres minimum, probably closer to thirty-five. It would either kill her or at the very least shatter her legs like matchwood. Nor was there any possibility of climbing to freedom – she’d already knelt and peered out over the edge of the floor, trying to assess a potential route down, but it just wasn’t feasible. And anyway, the guards would clock what they were doing before they’d even started their descent. Shredded arm, shattered legs, shot: there were no appealing options.

‘Do you think he was just threatening?’ she asked,
looking round at Flin. ‘You know … the granulator … do you think they’ll actually … ?’

He looked up, then back at the photographs, unable to meet her eyes. It was all the answer she needed. Only about a minute now.

Away to her right there was a rumble of an engine and a slash of headlamps as a large flat-bed truck manoeuvred slowly around the corner at the top of the street. It jerked and juddered as the driver worked the brakes, trying to keep the vehicle under control. She wondered if she should shout out, cry for help, but what was the point? Even if the driver heard and understood her what was he going to do? Call the police? Charge up the stairs and rescue them single-handed? It was hopeless, utterly hopeless.

She wrapped her arms around herself, wondering how much it would hurt, whether it
would hurt
or if she’d just go into shock or pass out.

‘Will you be able to get me to a hospital?’ she asked out loud. ‘Is there one near?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Flin, his voice taut to the point of breaking, his face sheened with sweat and drained of colour. Curiously, he seemed more worked up than she was.

Up the hill the truck had managed to negotiate the corner and was now descending slowly towards her, its brakes wheezing and squealing. Its bed was heaped with what from this distance looked like a mound of sand or rubble, although it was difficult to tell in the dim, unhealthy glow of the intermittent street lamps. Freya watched it for a moment, then suddenly jerked round as behind her one of the guards let out a triumphant cry, brandishing his playing cards at his two companions, making a rubbing motion with
his fingers to indicate that they owed him money. Grumbling, they handed over the cash and were just about to deal again when from outside came three sharp blasts of a car horn. Time up. As if she had been slapped hard across the face, the reality of her situation burst on Freya. She started to shake, fighting back a strong urge to vomit. She turned to Flin.

‘You’ll need to get a tourniquet round my elbow.’ Her voice was unsteady, her eyes dull with fear. ‘When they’ve cut … when they’ve done it. You’ll need to get something tight round my elbow or I’ll bleed to death.’

‘They’re not going to do anything to you,’ Flin said. ‘You have my word. Just stay behind me. I’ll …’

‘What? What will you do?’

He didn’t seem to have an answer.

‘Just stay behind me,’ he repeated impotently.

She stepped up to him, took his hand and squeezed it. For a moment they stood like that. Then, letting go, she reached out and undid the buckle of his belt, Flin remaining motionless as she slipped the belt out of the loops of his jeans and passed it to him.

‘Tourniquet,’ she said. ‘As soon as it’s done you have to get this round my arm. Promise.’

He said nothing.

‘Please, Flin.’

A pause, then he nodded, taking the belt from her and touching her cheek.

‘Just stay behind me.’

The men had packed away their cards and were peering down the stairway as from below came the echo of ascending feet. One of them looked over at Freya and grinned,
chopping his right hand against his left wrist, making a growling sound as of grinding machinery. She shuddered and turned away, stepping back to the edge of the floor and gazing down at the truck again. It was now only forty-odd metres up the hill, still descending at a snail’s pace. Maybe she
should
call out. Scream the place down. It wasn’t like she had anything to lose. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, but for some reason she couldn’t make her voice work. Could only stand there staring as the truck rumbled ever closer, its flat-bed suddenly coming into clearer focus as it passed directly beneath one of the sodium lamps. It was not, as she had at first thought, heaped with sand or rubble, but with old material – loose shreds and scraps of cloth, offcuts of carpet, a fluffy mass of cotton, what looked like chunks of foam mattress: a deep, soft, cushioning …

‘Flin,’ she whispered, her shoulders tensing, electricity rippling down her spine. And then again, more urgent: ‘Flin.’

‘Hmm?’

He came up beside her. Freya nodded down at the truck, now less than twenty metres away.

‘You ever see
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
?’ she asked. ‘That scene where they—’

‘Jump off the cliff.’ Flin finished the sentence for her. ‘Oh Christ, Freya, I don’t think I can. It’s too far.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

‘It’s too far.’

‘I’m not letting them cut my arm off, Flin.’

Behind them the echo of footsteps drew ever closer. Flin looked at her, then at the truck, then at Freya again.

‘OK,’ he said, wincing as if about to drink something he knew would taste disgusting.

He slipped the photographs inside his shirt and buttoned the shirt up to the collar, tucking it well down inside his trousers. One of the guards had wandered across to the granulator. The other two were still peering down the stairwell. None were looking directly at them.

‘Count of three,’ she murmured as the front of the truck came level with where they were standing. ‘One … two …’

‘In the film … they survive the jump, don’t they?’

She nodded. ‘Although they both get shot later. Three!’

They clasped hands and stepped out into space.

For a moment the world around them blurred into a confused kaleidoscope of walls and roofs and balconies and washing lines before snapping into focus again as they thudded down onto the back of the truck. The mound of cloth and rags gave beneath them, breaking their fall. Freya was thrown sideways against the truck’s tailgate, slamming into a sodden slab of mattress foam, jarring her neck, but otherwise unscathed. Flin was not so lucky. Bouncing off a roll of old carpet and over the side of the truck, he flailed through the air like a drunken gymnast, crashing sideways-on into a stack of plastic barrels and from there face-first into a heap of rubbish, some unseen object slicing a deep gash in his left arm.

They lay where they were for a few seconds, groggy, winded. Then shouts rang out above and they started scrambling. Freya heaved herself off the back of the still-moving truck and dropped to the ground. Flin slid and stumbled his way upright, his shirt sleeve soggy with blood.
Staggering over, he propelled her towards a narrow alleyway on the opposite side of the street from the building in which they had been held. The shouts from above were now answered by other shouts at street level, where men must have been stationed to watch the building’s rear. They reached the alley and piled into its narrow black mouth, blundering forward through the darkness, gagging at the sour, suffocating stench of raw waste, feet crunching on a tide of rubbish.